Texas tornado hits UC

OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, February 27, 1997

1997-02-27 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA; BERKELEY -- SYNDICATED Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Molly Ivins has traded in her Tex-Mex combo plates, temporarily, for the rarefied cuisine of the People's Republic of Berkeley. It's those duck confit quesadillas that have her a little confused, but not much else.

Ivins has emigrated to the Left Coast with Athena, the pick-up truck poodle (a black standard who is real happy to meetcha - pant, pant), to teach a graduate seminar,

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Here through late March, she left the truck back home and is tooling around, like a real California "gurl," in an electric turquoise Mustang convertible. Otherwise, everything else is the same - the flame-red hair (Scot / Irish mix), the generous bosom, tree-top height and the uproarious laughter that erupts constantly as Ivins views the human condition.

California politics, she says, are almost as strange as Texas politics. But what a relief to be somewhere where

"no one thinks you're a commie because you're a Democrat. I've told everyone in Texas that I'm turning into a vegetarian except that I eat raw fish."

She's been wanting to try teaching for a long time, but every school that's contacted her wanted a year's commitment, which for a political junkie like Ivins was just too long.

"I was afraid to leave the column for a year," she says, but when Schell asked her to become, as she puts it, a

"Distinguished Visiting Poobah," and to teach Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:30 p.m., and "not serve on committees or get involved in faculty politics," she took it.

"Molly is a big encourager," comments Doug Foster, director of school affairs for the UC-Berkeley graduate j-school. "She is also not a bulls- - - , so people are getting very direct and very detailed comments about their work from a practitioner. She has never taught before, so it was, in some ways, a gamble for her and a gamble for us. . . . It's not like she is a stranger to college campuses, but this is not a question of blowing in for a day to give a talk and blowing out. The no-bulls- - rule works both ways. When you're meeting with students and pushing them along to the next level of excellence, you have to bear down, and Molly really has. She's an integral part of the school, not some visiting fly-by."

For Ivins, teaching is serious stuff. "I had to sit down and think what I wanted (the students) to know. Mostly, the class is: attitudes about power." For now, the Texas Legislature is probably breathing a huge sigh of relief, at least until its second term when she returns to her

"official thorn in the side" status in Austin.

Meanwhile, her class is "taking form as it goes," she says. "You can only dazzle them with bulls- - for one or two days," and then you have to get down and teach. Actually, she says, "the kids are teaching me. You have to think very carefully what it is you think you've learned over the years. I told them that being a journalist may excuse you from being a decent human being or obeying the law, but it doesn't ever excuse you from the requirements of good manners."

On a more serious note, Ivins says that her charges are

"thinking hard about ethical questions, like when you put down that pencil or camera and begin to help.

In fact, it's been my own experience that there are no rules when words like "always' and "never' apply. It's almost like a course in situational ethics."

At 52, Ivins has plenty to share. As one of the most powerful political pundits in the country (she's been nominated for a Pulitzer three times), Ivins is up there among the tough-talking Breslins and Roykos of the profession who jockey for the best bon mot and the wickedest observation. She earned her outsider stripes as a liberal in Texas (about as rare as a natural blonde in Dallas) at the Observer, a small publication in Austin in the early '70s.

"We were very poor, and very outsider," she says. "We were so poor we used to steal pencils from the governor's office and the business manager used to sleep under the Address-o-graph. I was definitely a rebel. My teenaged rebellion lasted until I was 29. In my early days, we used to denounce the Texas Legislature as egg-sucking, child-molesting, blue-bellied pissants. I hoped to become a martyr to great journalism." But every time she and the Observer attacked, the objects of her disaffection said, "Thanks for puttin' mah name in the paper." Alas, martyrdom was not to be hers.

About her height, Ivins says, "It has made a difference because I am almost 6 feet tall. There is sizeism in this country as well as sexism and big people get taken more seriously. I have towered over almost every editor I've ever had. And they never confused me with a delicate little flower. I was never treated like a fluff head. And," she says, throwing back her head and guffawing loudly, "I don't flirt with sources."

But she sure is funny. Which she denies. "I'm not very funny. They're funny," "they" being the Texas politicos who are the butt of her jokes. Texas just naturally breeds material. Take Ma Ferguson, who stepped in as governor when her husband was impeached. "She looked like Carrie Nation with a hangover," drawls Ivins, "and she ran on a platform to outlaw Latin in the Texas public schools on the grounds that the Bible was written in English and if it was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for Texas." You can't make up stuff like that.

California has also been a fountain of gold for Ivins, who for the duration of her tenure at Cal has cut back her columns to two a week. "California is important to the rest of the country," she notes, "because you are way ahead for both good and ill." Take Proposition 187, for instance. The immigration debate has her transfixed.

"You Californians just don't know what to do about the "immigrant problem,' " she says. "Texas is much more progressive. Prop. 187 is so ill-advised." Are Californians blaming the right people for their economic woes? She asks, tartly, "Is y'all's economy run by illegal Messikins? We have a lot of illegal Messikins in Texas, but they're not running the S&Ls. And in Texas they aren't the ones who shut down the defense industry. Maybe ya'll ought to get yours where we get ours. Chihuahua."

(Did Molly Ivins really say that? Why, yes, she did.)

Finally, Ivins, who, when asked, can rustle up an opinion about just about anything, has declared Willie Lewis Brown, late of Mineola, TX ( "He was one of yours," I tell her), to be "the most interesting practicing politician I've seen in years. He has a streak of Lyndon Johnson in him that is unmistakable."

The Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkeley and Cal Performances sponsor an onstage conversation with Molly Ivins and Doug Foster (former editor of Mother Jones, he is director of school affairs) at 8 p.m., Thursday, March 20, Zellerbach Hall, UC-Berkeley. Tickets are $16, general admission; $8 for students. Call (510) 642-9988.&lt;